


Take Me, Instead

by MajorEnglishEsquire



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Clubbing, DJ Watson, Drug Use, Hand & Finger Kink, M/M, Music, Pre-A Study in Pink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 09:40:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This comes from a prompt on the LJ community "sherlockbbc_fic": "AU wherein John is a DJ (because DJ!Freeman has always been a kink of mine) and he meets Sherlock in one of the clubs he works for."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Me, Instead

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own the rights to the characters, setting, show, etc. No harm intended.
> 
> Inspired by [this fic prompt](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/5564.html?thread=18839484#t18839484) and [the accompanying video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIj_RJvvZLo) of Martin Freeman doing his DJ thing.

The wall breathes, so Sherlock tries to breathe too.

He's not seeing music, but he is feeling it in his hollow, little bird bones. He is throbbing with noise from the inside, out.

He feels the wall at his back, black-painted concrete, and it helps. Every pit and line of mortar, each gouge in the paint, the irregular lines of blocks that are not uniform. He feels every imperfection under his slowly steadying hands. He breathes the music and it helps to keep him solid.

Cocaine courses through his system, yes. He is young and not-at-all stupid and just-this-side-of reckless and alone on the other side of town. Far from his roommates. Hardly mates. Almost just 'people who he knows.' And with whom he shares a general dislike and many a twisted, passive-aggressive smile.

He closes his eyes and feels the flashing lights on the lids. He breathes with the deafening pound of techno. He is anonymous in the club, he's broke but for exactly two quid, and he's having trouble breathing without a wall to fall back on.

It's the music that's saving him, teaching him how his pulse beats, keeping his flesh from falling off him, keeping his blood from becoming cold sludge in his veins. This is the worst high ever and the best music ever. Altogether, the experience is life-saving. He's heard burnouts and addicts wax poetic about brilliant, life-changing music. He's never been _that guy_.

From the back Sherlock can see that the man on stage, behind the mass of speakers, is sweating buckets and constantly adjusting his headphones, but each sound he constructs is precisely made. The rhythm bursts and flows with the mood of the crowd. He reads them so precisely that the howling and shouting hardly stops. Girls' hands are in the air and their hips are swiveling. There are blokes hovering near the bar but reluctant to actually move to it for refreshment as they chase all those perfect hips through all of those energetic sways.

He has been in the dark club, pressed and tossed by bodies, for forty minutes now and the last two minutes of sheer harmonious, relentless noise and bass is gluing his muscles back into place. He found the right club to stumble into, he is proud he has handled a bad high so well. He is deeply ashamed he did not test this batch, from an unfamiliar dealer, for extraneous bonders and spare chemicals. His insides are wounded and the deejay, spinning almost schizophrenically up on stage, darting between a box of LPs, the board, the laptop, scratching and flipping, hands steady and artful, creating the body-undulating thrum that moves the walls with almost careless grace – the DJ saves him.

The set is changing. The host makes some announcement over the music, which ties up all its ends, fades and drifts away on high notes and becomes some anonymous repeating beat. The crowd claps and cheers, shifts and drinks, welcoming a new set. The host draws a new DJ up on stage as he bids the first fellow farewell.

Sherlock takes the last strains into his lungs with the first of the new, slower set. The noise drops considerably and his mind begins to crowd back in on him, dropping information he can't lose in the dark. Skinny redhead ankle injury size four heels gin and gin and dope, broad-shouldered male of Asian descent pick-pocketing takes the bus to work, bald half-Irish-half-American psychology student healing tongue piercing at least two webbed toes on either foot inside his heavy boots—

Sherlock lurches, fast as he can, towards where the stage meets the floor. He has to see the man’s _hands_ , for God's sake, those hands, doing the work of angels. The DJ stumbles off, being half-shoved by the host and pressed into the crowd where pretty girls smile and flatter him.

He can see the young man's face now, quite tired, exhausted even, but sheer enjoyment echoing from his crinkled smile. He is short, thin, movements precise, angles himself efficiently in a crowd.

Sherlock reads him. Becomes a new and necessary being.

He unbuttons the front of his jacket, pulls his sleek, expensive shirt out from beneath his belt. He unbuttons the top and bottom buttons of his shirt to expose a sliver of lower belly, a wide V of chest. He puts on a carefree smile and a slouch, claps as the DJ comes his way. He's clutching a jumper and his other belongings, smiling, nodding, thanking, sliding along the wall, and finally passes.

Then Sherlock follows.

The young man lacks confidence in his strides as of yet. Every man with a larger frame is given passage before himself, every woman too good-looking for him to speak to personally also steps in front of and around him without a glance. He is keenly aware of social order. He is not incredibly attractive himself, more compact, sharp, and charming. Sherlock follows him along the walls until he exits the building. As he walks, he undoes his cuffs, parts his hair on the opposite side, morphs into what he imagines would be singularly attractive to this man. The DJ, he wants to see his hands, needs to see his hands, must follow where the music comes from... He wants to follow the lines on his palms to his veins up through his naked shoulders to his spine and brain stem. He wants to know where this lovely music lives and he knows he'll find out just by following skin.

The man heads to a parked car along the street and fumbles his way in. It's an old car, broken in several places, unable to be locked, ignored by thieves. He stuffs his box of LPs deep in the back seat and throws jackets over to conceal them. He stows a battered laptop and cords under the front seat and tosses two empty plastic water bottles towards the passenger side. There is a shirt hanging over the other seat and he grabs it. Right there, in the middle of the hot city street, he yanks off his sweat-soaked tee and replaces it.

Sherlock absorbs every moment, every movement. There is a slight sway. He was a few beers deep before he got on stage, likely he is exhausted, still buzzed, still slightly blinded from the flashing lights inside. He shrugs into his new shirt too fast; Sherlock gains nothing but a glimpse of his unblemished, pale back.

His need propels him across the road. He crosses behind a slow car and wanders over, doing his best to betray his own intoxication.

"Great set," he purrs, in a voice not entirely his own, aiming for tempting.

The DJ turns, pulling his shirt straight over his front, smiles wider than he already is. "Thanks." He nods in the direction that Sherlock's walking, towards a darkened street corner, "have a safe night."

Sherlock nods back, blinks slowly, quirks a small, soft smile, and walks on.

He stops, half a building away, and turns as if struck.

"Wouldn't happen to be going west, would you?"

The DJ looks back up at him, shuts the car door. "Sorry, no, I was headed back in. I'm not the, em, driver," he motions towards the hood.

Sherlock sighs a little and strolls back to him. "So you're waiting for someone?"

The DJ nods, no caution, all youth, ignorance, stupid as anyone else save for the sounds in his veins. "Just some mates."

He doesn't know he did it. It's rare that people do understand the slight, tiny ways they give away their desires and attractions in the microscopic things they do. Not waiting for a girl, not interested in going back into the club for attention, a lay, a drink, just waiting for friends, anticipating the end of a long, long night.

"Smoke," Sherlock offers as a question and strolls back to his side. He shakes out a pack of cigarettes and searches for his matches, patting his jacket and pants flat down to his body. He watches the DJ's eyes follow his hands.

"None for me, thanks. Not that you should, either." Pre-med, Sherlock knows, and slides the box back into his jacket.

"I'm not just being flip, you know. You were great up there. You knew the crowd perfectly, really played to your audience." Saved me.

The DJ's eyes are pleased, though his movements are a bit guarded now. His cheeks are losing their flush, he is coming down from being on stage. He is on a dark street, alone with a strange man. The yawning doors of the club are still breathing music and there are people right there, but he is cautious anyway. Sherlock's slouching but he's still got some height on the other man. He leans against the boot of the car and slides further down.

"Might want to sit before you fall," he comments, motioning at the DJ's general air of fatigue.

The smile is wry this time and he circles the car, opens the back door, and sits on the seat, tossing his legs out onto the sidewalk. "Long nights. I shouldn't be out this weekend, anyway. Loads of studying to do. But here we are. I couldn't resist when Mike said he'd get me a spot on stage tonight. Don't know if I'll do it again, but like I said, thanks."

You _have to_ do it again, Sherlock thinks but doesn't say. He’s still aiming for seductive, but the DJ is obviously too knackered to really catch on. He sinks down to the brick next to the DJ's legs and sits, knees up to his chin, back pressed to the tyre, the appearance of carelessness, drunkenness.

"You can sit on the other one, the driver side," the DJ nods towards the front of the car. "And I'm John, by the way."

"Of course you are," Sherlock says. Plain as boring can be.

"Pardon?"

Sherlock stands again. "No, really, I'm a little trolleyed. I should be crawling home. But first I need to see your hands."

Sherlock turns and slowly moves to loom over John, still sitting down by the ground on the car's seat. John looks high up above him and his face folds into this new, bemused smile.

"My hands."

Sherlock gives up. He can see where this is going. He could have followed John into a dark corner booth, some nook, or hallway, maybe even blown him in the men’s room if they were both a bit more out of their minds tonight. But this boy, John, he's not easy. He's made of tougher stuff, maybe not brilliant, but certainly not just another stupid sheep.

"They save lives, those hands."

John shrugs, "not yet."

"No. They do." Sherlock breaks out of character slightly, quits the slouch and his neck adjusts to his full, insane height. He steps between John's outstretched legs and motions for his hands, as if he were about to lift him up.

He waits.

John looks up, sees him for the first time, the angles of his nose, mouth, blacked-out eyes quite stark in the muted streetlamp glow.

John gives him his hands.

Sherlock pulls the palms towards him, inspects the fingers for mere seconds. He leans down from the sky, drops a kiss in John's palm and then folds both hands between his own.

"If I had a place to go back to now, I'd want to take you to bed and find where it comes from," Sherlock reveals his thoughts, for the first time ever knowing that this tiny deity will understand where his blown, drugged mind has taken him. Not knowing anything other than _plays music in his spare time, pre-med_ , he knows he will get the message across for once. It's not entirely clear why. "I'd follow the veins and have you name them for me. I want to know which muscles the music flows from and how it knows you so well."

He pauses. "Would you let me? Do you think?"

John is quietly baffled where he sits. He nods, for some reason and then at the same time says: "I don't... really... think so."

Sherlock's smirk is his own this time. He drops completely out of character.

"You save lives with these hands."

"I think you have me confused with a _real_ doctor, mate," John smirks a little, too.

"You do. You will."

Sherlock's walk back home is long. He feels the weight of John's hands in his own clammy palms the whole way. He wanted to touch the DJ's back and cup the curve of his skull and taste the ears where the sound comes in. He is lonely and the drugs dull him and sharpen him in turns. The whole time he uses, he never feels the way he did on that night. Not ever again.

There are years between cocaine and now.

Now there's a game about to begin. Apparent suicides all over London town and the police being stubborn and selfish about it. Sherlock clinging to the information like it booms from the speakers, throbs at the right frequency, loud enough to drown out the rest of his brain. Now John enters his life again, but, all over his face, has no idea who Sherlock is.

They are both slightly different now, hair longer on one, shorter on the other. Both of them grown and sobered and scarred in ways they weren't on a night years and careers and ages ago.

Not a glimmer of recognition from John.

Sherlock dismisses it twice before he shakes John's hand and finally _knows_ he really is _that_ John, the DJ demigod, with a new posture and a new laptop.

When, at last, Sherlock has been too close to John in their small shared flat for all too many months, he kisses his way up John's naked arms. He must find where every wonderful thought and movement and life-saving breath makes up John Watson. He cradles John’s head and follows his lovely muscles, living veins, with his mouth. John laughs and laughs at the feeling, moans when Sherlock's mouth covers his ear lobe. He is considering laying a kiss in John's palm, wants to know if he will ever remember. While he is thinking about this, John curls his arms around Sherlock's back and his fingers tap music out over Sherlock’s neck and spine.


End file.
